Review of I'm Not There (2007) by Nema P — 01 Oct 2010

There's something about Cate Blanchett's Bob Dylan -- her perfectly matched articulation of his fidgeting aspect that makes the viewer fall in love with his music, his attitude and his recklessness all over again.

It's as though I can see Dylan for the first time, through Blanchett; and it's not a vision I acquire by contrast, but similarity. Her depiction of his boyish affected apathy or martyring sincerity is the type of clarity necessary for viewing an icon: through other people's eyes, as another person or other people.

While I was ready to throw up my hands at the absurdity of the connections between the plot and Dylan's own life and enigmatic soundbites, I had to remind myself of other treatments of historical fiction that would have settled for a hackneyed storytelling paradigm.

It was a new type of storytelling for a storyteller, who didn't want to be named; and so remains.